As last Thursday’s presidential debate recedes into the distance, a couple of questions still float in the minds of partisans on each side. What did Kerry take out of his pocket? And what was that bulge under Bush’s jacket?

Kerry first, since his mystery seems pretty well solved. I’m not going to bother linking to him, but unprincipled attention-whore Drudge, along with a smattering of Bush-leaning webloggers, made a big deal about that moment when Kerry approached the podium and reached into his coat to remove something. I noticed the move while watching the debate in realtime; there wasn’t anything sneaky about it, and the subsequent movement of his hands made it pretty clear what he’d taken out: a pen.

Drudge led the speculation in another direction: it could have been prepared notes, notes that would clearly have given Kerry an unfair advantage in the debate. And even if it was a pen, pointed out Drudge, pens were explicitly forbidden by the 32 pages of debate rules agreed to by both sides beforehand, which stated quite clearly that the debaters had to deliver up all pens, paper, whatever, to the debate organizers in advance. The items could then be inspected, cleared for fairness, and left on the podium. No pulling anything from your pocket. That would be (at least potentially) unfair.

Yeah, well, okay. You caught him. Kerry broke the rules. And subsequent investigation reveals that, as was clear from the outset, what Kerry pulled from his pocket was, in fact, a pen.

So, I’m glad we got that out in the open. Good work, righties. The republic has been saved, once again, by your eternal vigilance.

Turning to Bush’s alleged rule-breaking, the situation gets both murkier and more sinister. There’s no conclusive evidence, but the allegations circling in the Bush-hating part of blogland are significantly juicier. Basically, there’s actually reason to believe that Bush may have used some kind of hidden wireless receiver at the debate to get outside help on his responses.

Which makes even me pause for a tinfoil-hat check. I realize how this sounds. At a minimum, there’s the objection that if Bush was getting his answers fed to him from off-stage, they would have been better answers. But set that objection aside for a moment, and consider the evidence.

Midway through the debate, in the middle of a 90-second rebuttal to a particularly strong Kerry attack on the way Bush misled the country in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush said the following:

I think what is misleading is to say you can lead and succeed in Iraq if you keep changing your positions on this war, and he has. As the politics change, his positions change. And that’s not how a commander in chief acts.

I — let me finish. The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at. It’s the very same intelligence.

Now, the weird thing is, no one was trying to interrupt Bush at that point. As far as you can tell from the televised feed, neither Kerry, Lehrer, nor the audience was doing anything to hinder Bush. None of his little lights had come on. (Update: Per the later Salon piece by Dave Lindorff — Bush’s bulge — the first light actually had come on at that point. Sorry about the disinformation.) So who was he talking to? (Audio available here, if you missed it: Bush blows debate! Talks to Rove in earpiece!)

There was also the moment when Bush, again having been bloodied by a particularly sharp attack, swung quickly into action, faced into the camera, then said, “Yeah, uh, I, uh –” and then stopped, staring straight ahead, for five… long… seconds… before actually beginning his response. (Jon Stewart got a huge laugh when he ran the clip on The Daily Show’s post-debate coverage. But it was very much one of those “funny because it’s actually kind of scary” moments.) So yeah, maybe he was just “gathering his thoughts.” But five seconds is a really long time. And it’s not like his manner gave the impression of someone thinking up a really juicy rejoinder. It looked, I swear, much more like someone listening to a secret voice inside his head telling him what to say, anxious for it to hurry up and finish so he could tee off on Kerry.

Okay, okay. It’s nuts, I know. But then we have “the bulge.” Check out the images, and the accompanying discussion of past situations in which Bush has been caught more or less red-handed being fed answers via earpiece: The voice in Bush’s ear.

Now, I’m not saying this is a slam-dunk case. I’m not sure it even rises much beyond the Drudge level of silliness. (Well, actually, I am sure it does that. But that’s a very low bar.) But think about it for a minute: If this is true, if Bush really did come into the debate wired to receive secret promptings, that’s… just… I dunno; actually worse than I would have expected of him. And that’s a very high bar indeed.

Anyway, it’s something to think about as we head into Friday’s rematch.

Your first instinct was right….it is silliness. It’s just the kind of overheated, obsessive reaction that a significant segment of the Bush-Haters tend to howl about in their arguments about the President, which makes any reasoned thinker they are talking to just roll their eyes and walk away (or maybe back away verrrry slowly!).

The fact that such a “high risk-minimal gain” trick just doesn’t make sense, won’t stop such wild-eyed people from pushing these accusations forward.

At least the Conservatives are dropping the initial questions of fairness surrounding Kerry, due to the further evidence and the fact that even a pen violation claim sounds petty and would be of little concern to the voting public.

I can’t wait for the next Michael Moore movie to include a repeating loop of Bush’s awkward pause during the debate, with a superimposed clock running on the screen. I can hear Moore’s sarcastic narrative now…”What do you suppose he’s thinking here? Gee, I wish I had studied more seriously for this debate rather than staying up all night drinking with my daughters.”

Well, to argue that Bush wouldn’t engage in some behavior because it carried high risks and a low probability of success would be to deny many of the major decisions of his presidency. What was the Iraq invasion, after all, if not a “high risk, minimal gain” trick?

The thing that makes this credible to me, in spite of the fact that, granted, any rational person would veto the idea in a second, is that Bush quite clearly is not rational. Choosing to use a hidden earpiece at the debate would be evidence of profoundly bad judgement — but we already have abundant evidence that that is exactly the kind of judgement Bush has.

Someone like Karen Hughes or Dick Cheney would probably never recommend it, but Bush might still want it. This is, after all, a man who lives inside a protective cocoon, who insists on travelling with a favorite pillow. That kind of insecurity, of willingness to insulate himself from the outside world, might be the kind of thing that would lead him to engage in something like this. Especially if (as is clearly the case) it’s a trick he’s used in high-profile situations in the past. And if Bush insisted on it, who would stop him? As he’s fond of pointing out, he’s the president, after all.

At least until January.

So yeah, the story is probably just raving nutball lunacy. But I don’t think you can just dismiss it out of hand. Like I said, watch the next debate carefully. If the same evidence, in terms of Bush’s otherwise-inexplicable mannerisms, lingers, I think the probability of this being true has to ratchet up a notch. Conversely, if those mannerisms go away, but Bush’s performance gives evidence of even less command of facts and details than his last one, then I think that again, the probability that he did use an earpiece, and has now stopped for fear of discovery, goes up a notch.

Bush can’t use the teleprompters because he is dyslexic. He claims he isn’t, but he makes up sentences and words that sure indicate he is. But he denies it. But his brother is dyslexic and his Mom’s favorite charity is one on dyslexia. So he uses an audio-prompter to defuse that. Of course then they just carried it too far and made him into a puppet for Karl.

I noticed the long pause. I think that /bush is heavily “medicated” and he just fades out sometimes. The problem with the debate was that if they medicated him too much, he’d be totally incapable of responging, but if they didn’t medicate him enough, his anger would break through. I think they chose to reduce the medication so we saw Bush’s hositlity, but he was still too medicated to talk sense.

This whole bulge issue is probably going to be completely dead after tonight (me, I was opting for the bulge being Bush’s pull-ring)… BUT…. in fact, having little else to do at work, I trolled around the web a bit and found several different versions of the Bush Bulge (OMG).

Strangely enough, although any 10 year old with a minimum level of knowledge in Photoshop type software could create that bulge in one picture (OK, make that a 14 year old), the fact that there are at least two other pictures out on the web — with Bush in slightly different postures — which also show the bulge with the difference being that in each different picture the shadow changes subtlely in each case, but only just a bit, and always showing that SOMETHING is indeed there. Something, which is basically the same shape and which occupies the same position. Unfortunately, it looks as if Bulgegate goes beyond just the icky hoax parameters.

But frankly, who cares. Even if he did have help, he was lousy. Who cares then? Let him go ahead and do it. My only advice would be that for tonight, they should tape the transmitter into his shorts. Although God Only Knows what sort of face he’d make as the thing warmed up down there.

Yes, the story is out there, but there are some compelling points for veracity, especially if you re-view the debate:
1. When people are listening via ear-phones, they shift their eyes around, uncontrollably. Check out Bush on the split screen during Kerry’s talk-time. There’s a lot of eye wandering.
2. His pauses before answering, those painful, stuttering moments, suddenly make some sense. If you compare his normal response time in the rare interview with these, you’ll see what I mean. During my first view of the debate, I kept saying: he’s malfunctioning. Now this has some context.
3.This story has been reported since the Bush D-Day speech in France, when during a CNN interview, you could actually hear someone feeding Bush answers through the earpiece seconds before he said the same thing (sorry, I can’t find the link right now, but will post).
YIKES.

Bush is an alien. He struggles with English because it is his second language.

The bulge in Bush’s jacket in that ‘picture’ looked remarkably like the face on mars. Maybe it was a communication device, but not from Carville Rove…err…Karl Rove, but from the Martians that sent him.

The delays and stuttering are a result of his translating the Martian language he is comfortable with, into the difficult Earthly language of English.

I digitally recorded the first debate on my computer using an EyeTV setup. The bulge is clearly visible at around 28 minutes (on my recording – I may have started recording at a different time than other folks). Of course, the fact that it’s there doesn’t prove what it is, yet it is definitely there. Somebody else certainly must have recorded this. Speak up if you see it.

Let me be the first to say that the discovery of usage of an illicit two-way communications system by Bush and his handlers would be, for me, one of the most gleeful, juiciest moments in political history. It would be a wet dream.

However, I seriously doubt the President and his team, even at their paranoid worst, would ever consider such a stunt. The risks of ruin were such a scheme were ever exposed would be much too great. It would certainly cost Bush the election.

Consider: Bush is revealed to be in contact with Rove and Company. In the debate, he had facts passed to him and someone was helping him out. Kerry stands on righteous indignation, and because of this egregious offense, refuses to participate in any further debate. The wreckage then falls squarely on the Bush campaign, which, to adjust to the revelation, is now desperate to minimise the damage. But it’s too late – the networks, the Kerry campaign, the blogsphere all unload on the President, who is now seen to be damaged goods. In a close election such as this one, Bush goes down.

Implausible? Hardly – Bush would be crushed in public if it came out he cheated. And keeping something like this secret is not that easy.

I have the url to the D-Day CNN live video that clearly picked up Bush being transmitted his speech. Some people claim it is feedback but then why is the feed picked up before he makes his statements, in a voice very different from his & not repeated word for word. There is some difference in the wording. After his speech pay careful attention to the reporter at the very end of the clip. He gets a disgusted look on his face and starts shaking his head. Makes you wonder how much reporters know about what is really going on.

While people say he did so bad in the debate that it doesn’t matter… the fact is it does matter. If he were to do something like this then it makes it clear how dishonest he is and how incapable he is of performing his duties as Commander in Chief!

Although I don’t like Bush much (especially with everything that’s coming out), I don’t think they’d stoop to this level…I think this is one of those “conspiracy theories,” but nothing surprises me anymore.

We clearly saw the bulge during the debate and wondered what it was at the time. We thought it might be a bullet proof vest. Regardless, it was definately there for all to see. If the photos are doctored it was at the level of the live television transmission.

I think the WH’s evasive answers in today’s NYT (10/9/04)give this story a bit more credibility. Honestly, what is that box? The WH has no reasonable explanation, just denial. First they say the photo is doctored then, backpedaling, they say it’s a “rumpling” of fabric. Yes. An inexplicably box shaped rumpling.

The possibility that Bush used a audio prompt– dyslexic or not– when it was in flagrant violation of the 32 pages rule book, should be taken seriously until a credible answer is supplied.

Think about it. A sitting president cheating in a debate. I mean, that is a story of Clintonian potential because it pokes a gaping hole in his carefully crafted “straight-shooter” myth.

Seeing how George W. Bush and his administration has been acting ever since they first got into office, there should be no question as to wether or not they’re capable of doing this.

They lied to both their citizens and the UN about Iraqs wepons of mass destruction, and how many have been killed? Cheating in a debate is nothing for these people. We’ve seen how they ignore rules whenever it suites them best. A 32-page agreement with their opponent is just as valid to them as an agreement with the UN or Saddam – It’s valid as long as it’s benefitial for them, but no longer.

(Which by the way was an official statement made by Adolf Hitler. Are you among the people thinking about voting George/Adolf back into office on November 2nd? For the sake of the world, and all us foreigners who doesn’t get our voice heard in the election of the President of the World; vote Kerry!!)

From what I’ve seen about the D-Day thing, it’s probably a repeater person saying the speech into a speech recognition system for the closed captioning. But there honestly isn’t much doubt in this Republican’s mind that Bush was wired. Someone’s been telling this guy what to do since he was elected (or at least since his presidency got hard after 9-11). I mean, why else would he refuse to testify before the 9-11 commission without his teddy bear…I mean, guardian…I mean, VP? I’m not ecstatic about Kerry, but at least his handlers know how to keep a lower profile.

i am living in germany and i tell you it`s embarrasing what we hear about your president. why does the rest of the world know that he failed in his 4 years of administration in almost everything, but thanks to fox news and other pro bush news, half of the Americans still believe everything he is saying is true. Crap on any reports which shows them misleading the public the whole time on iraq. crap on it!

i have watched every debate and especially now I still cannot understand it. what is it with you people?

Bush had his 4 years, now would you please let try Kerry to fix that!

I want my all time favourite country get back to normal and not make the same mistakes germany did. where by the way, the non-nazi public was lied to every time with Goebbels controlling the media and news.
and to see that in the land of our greatest saviours!

i can’t just find the photo everyone is talking about. it is missing from alot of the sites i am searching through , ya know it says here is the photo and there is just an empty square with a little red X indicating the link to the photo is not working

The president is a cheater. The mainstream media asked Bush’s handlers what it was. They said it was a “Wardrobe malfunction”, and the media left it at that. This is the biggest campaign story and no one will touch it with a ten foot pole. I guess they don’t want a repeat what happened to Dan Rather.

If Bush really IS wearing an earpiece for debate prompting from KKKarl Rove & Co., might it be possible to scan for the channel it is using and then blow the earpiece scam with a blast of high-volume sound (like the feedback from an electric guitar too close to the amplifier) while Bush is talking. That would cause him to suddenly wince, grab for the ear where the painfully offending earpiece sound is torturing him, and expose the whole earpiece thing for whatever it is — or is not, if in fact he is not wearing one.

I think the most plausible explanation would be a bulletproof vest. However, the NYTimes article and others report the White House explicity stating Bush was NOT wearing body armor during the first debate.

Wouldn’t it be great if during the third debate, after patting Bush on the back to verify the presence of the receiver box, John Kerry stripped down to bare chest and invited the President to do the same?

My friend tells me he had a radio scanner outside the debate and heard voices from someone who appeared to be talking to Bush during the whole debate. He is now in talks with a TV network to sell the audio tape.

This is freaky stuff. at first I didn’t believe it at all… It’s too risky for his campign. But after seeing multiple photos, it looks more like heavy wiring than a box. it looks like its leading up to his ear. However, one thing that I dont understand, however, is the video posted earlier, here’s the link again: http://www.canofun.com/blog/videos/BushAndTheOddSync.wmv a) when re-broadcast over CNN, how could they simply over look the voice b) it sounds like Bush’s own voice… If someone has voice samples of Rove, post them so we can see… This is rather interesting. I’m not one to believe conspirisy but this is very odd.

I work in theatre, and ‘where to place the pack’ for wireless mics is always a question. Between the shoulderblades seems a pretty silly place to put the pack for his prompter. The back of a well tailored suit isn’t that baggy.

You would think the administration could afford people who would have suggested the small of his back, or inner thigh as better places for the pack.

Here’s my dream: that at the next debate, Sen. Kerry insists President Bush explain what that bulge on his back is, then when the latter refuses, Kerry reaches over, yanks the jacket up, revealing for all the world to see what we all know it is, a wireless transmitter. The guy seems to have been cheating this way for years, and would be absolutely lost without this aid, so he’s bound to be wearing it this coming debate.

Also, this thing about Bush’s tailor saying it’s just a pucker of the seam or whatever… ask yourself how a tailor, who didn’t dress Bush that day and consequently, wouldn’t know what he actually had on beneath the jacket, could make a statement like that. Unless all the jackets he tailors have box-like seam puckers at the back. It’s all SPIN. They possibly paid him $15,000 for the suit, and, methinks, $50,000 for that pucker spin.

uh… are you kidding me? the “odd sync” video doesn’t even sync up with the two CNN correspondents. the entire video’s audio is off. how do you expect anyone to believe any of that? shouldn’t this video be all over the internet? in much higher quality? i encourage EVERYONE to download that video clip, and tell me what you think. some of you ppl need help…

quentin … my god … i ran this through a two-phase scan and didn’t find ANY evidence of photoshopping (or any other “malicious” photo editing). can you show me some of the “evidence” you claim to have or notice? also, that page has been on the whitehouse.gov page for two years… again… some ppl need serious help.

Is it possible that we are seeing suspenders? I’m not an apologist for the man but the pattern does vaugly resemble suspenders. Though why the tailer wouldn’t have suggested that eludes me.
If there was a live feed, even an encrypted one, there should have been some evidence & the Bush family buddies in the media might not like that. Try the BBC or CBC.

The WTC was a setup (demolition) planes were military fuel jets, no passenger windows, attached incendiary beneath (aka bomb) to ensure maximum “fireworks”. Even if the planes really were passenger liners, the WTC bldgs were built to withstand that impact. How else do you explain TWO 110-story buildings collapsing PERFECTLY upon themselves?? Buildings don’t burn near the top and collapse from below. The claim to infrastructure superheating would have had the buildings collapse at stress points ANYWHERE on the buildings, NOT from the bottom… Firefighters claimed they heard explosions as they ran from the buildings. Unfortunately, the fire chief and fighters were put on leave when it was discovered they would be on a radio show that night. Interesting too, the Pentagon suffered no damage from an airplane and documentation exists but was confiscated by the FBI from a convenience store and another property with surveillance equipment. Whether you believe it or not, no chairs, safety belts, fuselage or airplane wreckage was EVER recovered from the Pentagon.

ALL of this is documented on a DVD offered by a small TV station which demonstrates what a complete farce the 911 incident was… SURE, people died and the buildings collapsed… Remember, Mr. Bush proclaimed it “an act of war” which immediately freed the company from ANY claims. What a nice guy! No wonder they love him.

Without MDW, Mr Bush has no justification for a $400 billion war which also allowed the so called “Homeland Security Act” and other travesties to be legislated. Civil liberties are void, if anyone decides “you’re a terrorist threat”… like Germany or the Soviet Union did in the past.

With those facts in mind, what’s a little transmission of answers to a braindead alcoholic who cannot ever admit mistakes of any nature (see debate #2; what are 3 mistakes you made??)

I suggest ginkgo biloba for those who still doubt the validity of the hidden transmission equipment. If your income is greater than $200k, you’re very likely going to argue so you can keep the generous tax breaks afforded the top 5% of income earners in America. Honesty doesn’t pay the bills, so you’ll want to keep the rest of us in your “cheap labor pool” with promises of even more prosperity.

IF he wasn’t elected once, aren’t you worried he’ll be placed in office again. Remember when the “recounts” were supposed to be done?
“Protesters” were flown in from Texas & Washington to storm the recount efforts in Miami. When last asked, the recount showed GORE winning by a TEN:ONE ration.

Historically, the Republican Governor of California and Republican majority in the houses voted for deregulation of utilities citing greater competition which would result in lower prices for consumers. Funny, after only a matter of months, blackouts and brownouts became frequent (due to unnecessary “maintenance”) and the price of electricity tripled in one area. With one exception, the new owners of the generators were TEXANS. Amazing, how the “coincidences” keep going on and on and on….

I replaced my web server over the weekend, and then yesterday the new server’s hard drive died, unfortunately after corrupting the most recent backup copy I had for the site. The result was that I had to revert to last Saturday’s version of things, in the course of which I lost all the comments added since then.

As it turns out, I have copies of those comments, and can recreate them. I’m not willing to go to that effort for things like “Bush sucks! Kerry rocks! WOOOOOO!!!”, but I’ll plow through them and recreate those that seem especially worthy. And I’ll put the ones lost in this thread at the top of the list.

To Anonymous:
You stupid uninformed angry miserable excuse for a human being. You need a new brain the old one has run away to the middle east. You’d fit in well with those uneducated religious fanatics. Where do you get this stuff??? Have you read these fairytails off the prison bathroom?